First Pond Entertainment — a film sales and distribution company concentrating on issue-driven narratives centering underrepresented communities — has picked up US rights to Ann Marie Fleming’s feature animation Window Horses, ScreenDaily reports. Produced by the National Film Board of Canada and Fleming’s Stickgirl Productions, the film features the voices of Sandra Oh (also executive producer) and Ellen Page.
Window Horses centers on a young Canadian poet named Rosie Ming (voiced by Oh) who is invited to perform at a festival in Iran — though she’d rather go to Paris. Living with her over-protective Chinese grandparents, she has never traveled by herself. Once in Iran, the stories told by the poets and Persians she meets force her to confront her past as she learns more about the Iranian father she had assumed abandoned her, and the nature of poetry.
Page plays Rosie’s best friend, Kelly; the voice cast also features Don McKellar, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Nancy Kwan. Kevin Langdale, Janet Perlman, Bahram Javaheri and Jody Kramer are among the dozen-plus pedigreed animators who brought the film to life alongside Fleming.
First Pond is planning an Oscar-qualifying theatrical engagement at the Laemmle Music Hall in Los Angeles on September 29, with a limited release to follow. Window Horses premiered last year at Annecy, played in Toronto, and earned awards from the Gijon, Vancouver, RiverRun and Nashville film festivals. The film made its US premiere at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival earlier this year.
The deal was brokered by Oliver Ike for First Pond, James Roberts for NFB and Fleming.
